Labor Day Weekend Wrap-Up - Misawa Air & Space Museum and the Ryusendo Caves

Wow! We had quite the fun-filled holiday weekend--spelunking, space exploration, treasure hunting, and more! We were fortunate that Chris was able to have five days off due to a change in his work schedule; we made the most of it, especially since the new school semester begins next week. Oh, joy! ;)

In the two years that we have lived here, we've never made it over to the Misawa Air & Space Museum that lies adjacent to the Air Base. How sad is that? :) This past Sunday was a rainy one, which presented us with the perfect opportunity to explore a fun, indoor activity that Noah was finally old enough to enjoy. The museum had a bunch of really neat interactive stations that allowed even the smallest hands to manipulate--touching, pushing, pulling, and turning gears, levers, wheels, and pulleys. Noah loved it!

On Monday, the weather finally cleared up, allowing us to venture on a beautiful drive down the northern Japanese coastline. Japan is very mountainous, so a 130 km (78 miles) drive takes about three hours or more. Therefore, we opted to split up the drive time between the three of us and not make Daddy do all the tiresome driving...here's Noah readying himself for a "go" behind the wheel.

Heh...of course not! :) We actually took a break at rest stop and I brought the little guy up from his carseat to munch on some yummy animal crackers and fruit.

We finally made it to Ryusendo Park and we were glad to give our legs a nice stretch in the short walk to the caves. Chris tossed Noah up onto his shoulders, unprepared for the little guy's upchuck reflex that was spawned by the long car ride. :) We thought that his spitting up days were over...guess not. :)

Here's Chris cleaning up:

Sadly, I laughed at Chris' misfortune...then got spit up on as well. :( Not so funny when it's you.

When we were all clean from the incident (or as clean as we could be), we traveled on down the gravel path to the caves and stopped at the river to take a couple of photos. If any of you want an indicator of how tall the little guy is, here it is in the photo below. Do a Chris/Noah size comparison, keeping in mind that Chris is almost 6'4" in height. Y-E-A-H...Noah's not so little.

He appears to be prepping for a dive into the river...or practicing his best "clap, clap, clap" routine. I'm not so sure. :) The kid loves water, so we weren't surprised to see that he wasn't frightened by it rushing below him on the bridge. In fact, he was thrilled.

We unfortunately didn't get many photos inside the cavern due to it being poorly lit, but it was a neat experience. I think "ryusendo" in Japanese means "dragon cave" or "dragon waters," but I don't know which. :) It certainly looked like it could be home to a dragon, but I think all it housed were a few thousand sleeping bats, which we didn't get to see due to the penetrating darkness and steep caverns. The walls were cool and wet and water continuously dripped from above. At first, I thought it might be bat guano (Gross!) but I was thankfully mistaken. Here's a bit of trivia: Ryusendo, a natural treasure, is one of Japan's three biggest and greatest limestone caverns. Inside the cave is an underground lake, which is world-famous for its remarkable transparency of 41.5 meters. Pretty nifty!

Well, that's about it for us. We had a great weekend and hope you did as well! The next school term is just on the horizon, so after next weekend I'll have to take a sabatical from blogging for awhile. We look forward, however, to going to the Air Show on Sunday to see Japan's Blue Impulse team perform! They are the Japanese equivalent to the Blue Angels...it should be thrilling to watch and hopefully I'll get some great photos!

Until then,

Amanda